The legend of Happy Sindane, the South African teenager allegedly abducted as a toddler and forced to work as a white slave in a black township, appeared to crumble yesterday.

Police announced they were closing their investigation because there was no evidence to support the 16-year-old's claim to have been kidnapped 12 years ago from white parents.

The police believed "on a balance of probabilities" that Happy's biological mother was in fact Rina Mziyaye, the black woman he accused of spiriting him from Johannesburg and handing him over to a black family in the township of Tweefontein.

The youth caused a media furore in May when he walked into a police station in Bronkhorstspruit, the town nearest to Tweefontein, and announced he had fled a slave-like life and wanted to be reunited with his biological parents.

Skin the colour of toffee and with light brown hair, it was not clear if he was white, black or of mixed race.

He spoke only Ndebele but said he had been born to and reared by a white couple until being snatched by the family's maid.

But police now think that Happy is confused and that the supposed maid was in fact his real mother.

People claiming to be related to Rina Mziyaye said Happy was the product of an affair with a white man and that when no longer able to look after her son she passed him on to a friend, Betty Sindane.

The police have yet to confirm reports that Ms Mziyaye died several years ago but even in the absence of DNA tests they think she was the mother, said a Pretoria police spokesman. No prosecution was intended and police were withdrawing from the matter, he added.

At a court hearing in Bronkhorstspruit yesterday, Marthinus Kruger, the magistrate, said that he did not believe Sindane was lying.

"Unfortunately, we can't tell Happy who his parents are yet. What he believes is based on what people told him and what he saw. He saw he had a lighter complexion and wondered why.

"At this stage he is confused, but still believes in the back of his mind that he comes from white parents."

Speaking to reporters through an interpreter Happy contradicted himself several times but appeared to be sticking to his story: "I was taken by Rina."

The search for a Zimbabwe-based son of Ms Mziyaye continues as his DNA samples could resolve Happy's parentage.

DNA samples have already proven that he is not related to a white Pretoria couple who claimed he was their six-year-old son who disappeared 12 years ago while on his way to an amusement arcade.

It was also announced yesterday that a trust fund for Happy will be set up, starting with money from a settlement from the Dulux paint company which apologised after using his image in an advert last month. The Sindane family have said all along that they took in the youth as a favour to a friend and raised him as one of their own, which meant tending cattle and goats after school.

Happy ran away after his adopted mother Betty Sindane died and he rowed with her father, Koos.

Puzzled at being the only light-skinned person in Tweefontein, he apparently thought a television programme about abducted children explained his origins.

Happy is currently living at at Sizanani village, a children's home near Bronkhorstspruit. He is far behind in reading, writing, maths and geography, but adept with electrical appliances, said Father Charles Kuppelwieser, founder of the home.

He added: "Happy fixes just about anything you want him to fix."

Happy said he was content: "I get everything I want. Whenever people give me trouble here, I tell the father."